The most expensive substance on Earth is antimatter, costing trillions of dollars per gram (around $62.5 trillion) due to extreme rarity and production difficulty in particle accelerators, though only tiny amounts exist and cannot be stored long-term. Other contenders for most expensive things include large human-made projects like the International Space Station (around $150 billion) or extremely rare items like the History Supreme Yacht (around $4.8 billion) or rare diamonds, but antimatter is generally considered the costliest material by weight.
Antimatter, created solely in research labs in tiny atomic quantities, is considered the most expensive material on Earth, with a gram valued at approximately $62 trillion!
Antimatter is the most expensive substance on Earth, costing around $62.5 trillion per gram. It consists of particles with opposite charges to those in normal matter. When antimatter meets matter, they eliminate each other, releasing vast amounts of energy.
The most expensive thing in the world made by humans is International Space station.
From Antilia to Beverly Hills House: Here are top 10 most expensive things on Earth
Antimatter is not only a subject of immense scientific curiosity but also the most expensive material in the universe.
Antimatter, valued at $62.5 trillion per gram, is the world's most expensive substance, created atom by atom in the CERN Large Hadron Collider, a 27 km ring operating near absolute zero to accelerate particles to 99.99% the speed of light.
Found at a rate of only 1 part per 250,000 in the Earth's crust, gold is extremely rare. Some platinum group metals like rhodium are both rarer and more valuable than gold. On this page, learn more about how gold's rarity stacks up to other precious metals.
The most expensive man-made object is the International Space Station (ISS). Its final cost will be over $100 billion (£66.7 billion). Comments below may relate to previous holders of this record.
Top 20 Most Expensive Things in the World (2025 Edition): From Billion-Dollar Art to Ultra-Rare Cars
Could a toy that you own be worth lots of money in the future? If you think so, then hold on to it - as an old Star Wars action figure of Boba Fett has just fetched a record $1.342 million (£1.04 million), making it the most expensive toy ever sold at an auction.
Top 10 most and least expensive cities in the world 2024
The top 10 most expensive cities are, in order from rank 1 to rank 10: Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, New York City, London, Nassau and Los Angeles.
What many don't realize is that scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid in the world. One liter can be sold for around $10 million — and it provides an immediate benefit to humans.
7 Priceless Things
If you invested $1,000 in gold 10 years ago (around late 2015/early 2016), your investment would likely be worth significantly more today (late 2025), potentially in the range of $2,000 to over $3,000, reflecting substantial price appreciation, though less than the S&P 500 but outperforming during certain periods of market stress, acting as a hedge against uncertainty, with returns varying based on exact entry/exit points and premiums/spreads.
Despite this, in truth it is impossible to produce 100% pure gold based on current technical limits. Removing any tiny molecules of other material is not achievable, and would prove extremely expensive and difficult to even prove. This is why, in common terms, pure gold is 999 or 999.9 not 1,000 fineness.
About 95% of the universe is "invisible" because it's composed of dark matter (around 27%) and dark energy (around 68%), which don't emit, absorb, or reflect light, unlike the normal matter (stars, planets, us) that makes up the visible 5%. Dark matter's presence is inferred through its gravitational pull on visible galaxies, while dark energy is a mysterious force causing the universe's accelerated expansion.
"As soon as antimatter touches matter, it blows up," says ALPHA collaboration member and UC Berkeley plasma physicist Joel Fajans. The combined mass of the matter and antimatter is transformed entirely into energy in a reaction so energetic that "explosion" doesn't do it justice. Scientists call it an "annihilation."
As humbling as it sounds, normal matter almost certainly accounts for the smallest proportion of the Universe, somewhere between 1% and 10%.
Antimatter can be used as a mechanism within nuclear weapons and as a weapon in itself. Antimatter could be used as a trigger mechanism within nuclear weapons or the mechanism which ignites the nuclear fission reaction that results in a nuclear explosion.
A conservative estimate is that there are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. There might be twice as many, but perhaps a lot of them are small or less likely to support life for various other reasons. as my estimate of the value of the observable Universe. That's $6 × 1025, or $60 septillion.